Gotcha. Knowing the max you can send each year without paying taxes is $10k actually makes this a lot simpler.
So as I see it, the biggest question mark is about whether or not you want to get and retain US citizenship. If you do, having money in tax deferred accounts here in the US is worth a lot, if not, it'll just add complications down the road.
As an undergrad with income of $11k/year, you almost certainly won't owe any taxes on investments here in the USA either. However if your goal is to ultimately to make a relatively high salary (MD, or a PhD in a medical field), ultimately you will be subject to taxes on capital gains and dividends.
The sad news is that, while you're a US resident, you'll almost certainly also owe US taxes on investments in your home country once you hit the income thresholds where you'd own US taxes on investments held in the US (
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/income-from-abroad-is-taxable). However, the good news is that, as a noncitizen, you'll be able to get out of paying US taxes once you move and give up residency.
Assuming you don't decide you'd like to get citizenship in the US, and you'll end up retiring with savings of ~$750,000 in 20 years (supports $30,000/year at a 4% withdrawal rate), and you're sure you'll want to FIRE in your home country and not some third country, my order of savings would be:
1) Significant emergency fund in the USA <-- because things can come up suddenly and trying to get money back from overseas can take days or weeks.
2) Use up your tax free max of $10k/year of income sent back home each year.
3) Invest any surplus (which you probably won't have now, but certainly will have between now and when you turn 40) in a total world stock market ETF like VT (
https://advisors.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/advisor/investments/productoverview?fundId=3141).
Regardless, the thing to remember is that you're ahead of the game by thinking about this so early, and you're going to do fine. The most important thing is to focus on optimizing your lifestyle for happiness right now as an undergraduate and later grad/med student, and then not succumbing to lifestyle inflation once you're out of school and your income goes up dramatically. I didn't start thinking about FIRE until I was about 25 and well into my PhD program, and as far as I can tell so far it hasn't set back my FIRE schedule at all.
...my home country's equity is ~.01%
Well that rules out my own pet idea that you had come over Hong Kong.
